I will do my project over identity tourism and gaming-specifically, I will look at #1: the current capabilities of the digital gaming world. #2: how the current gaming world has affected people so far. #3: I will briefly look at where the gaming world is heading without trying to be too prognative. #4: based on the current effects on people these days, we can generalize what the effects will be 10 years from now, and how our sosciety is going to change due to methods of teaching, training, mono-learning, etc. My argument will elude to as games become more and more realistic, the idea of the virtual world and physical world merge together. People will change, the social challenges themselves are already seen in kids today. Kids who stay on their computers all day or night, gaming in general, are not as "fit" or up to date on the social skills expected from them. The real world becomes boring, and the most exciting part of life is gaming which may inhibit their learning process all together. Another aspect would be the identity tourism part in gaming, some kids or adults become drawn into games, especially when they get even more realistic, if they have a completely different identity/personality online then it will eventually merge into their physical personality, because the physical and virtual worlds mesh and it will be hard to differentiate between the two. Not only because of gaming, but as teaching and training become digital instead of physical.
for example the ARMY is starting to use gaming to train their troops in some aspects of the job. If we eventually have simulators that go over your head and imitate real life situations, and you control the virtual being with your brain, it could become easy to mistake physical situations vs. virtual, and the dangers themselves are a problem. In games, you die, and restart, and that is the mentality kids going into the military these days have which is why as gaming is implemented into training, it is so important to be able to contrast between life and death, and start and the end. Another part about simulations is young adults will start to get used to killing people, the brains will get the idea more and more engraved to the point where killing someone in real life will be no different than killing someone during the simulation. This would make our soldiers less humane, and go against the UN.
The information going against my argument will be how gaming does not inhibit the gamers learning, and their social capabilities are well upto their maturity level, and that games will help the learning process go quicker and smoother.
Not to long ago there was a 10 or 11 year old boy who stole his moms durango and took it out for a joyride with his friend, smashing into cars on the road, in parking lots, running things over until the vehicle died. When asked why he did it, he said he was only doing what he did in Grand Theft Auto, he wasn't sorry for it and he had a good time.
Sources:
Betsy Book. "Moving beyond the game: social virtual worlds"
Elizabeth Losh. "In country with tactical Iraqi: Trust, identity, and language learning in a military video game" University of California, Irvine.
Mark D. Griffiths. "The rold of context in online gaming excess and addiction: some case study evidence" International Journal of Health and Addiction, Jan 2010 Vol.8 Issue 1, P 119-125
Zaheer Hussein. Mark D. Griffiths. "Gender swapping and socializing in cyberspace: an exploratory study" CyberPsychology and Behavior. Feb. 2008, Vol. 11 Issue 1 P47-53
Nakamura. "measuring race on the internet: users, identity, and cultual difference in the United States" Digitizing Race. Ch. 5
Rowland Atkinson. Paul Willis. "Charting the ludodrome. The mediation of urban and simulated space and rise of the flaneur electronique" Information, communication and sosciety. Dec. 2007, Vol. 10 Issue 6 P 818-845
You are trying to solve the world's problems in a 2500 word essay. You need to focus, focus, focus on something you can argue with proof and examples. You've set up a history of gaming and then predictions for all of the future -- that's not going to work.
ReplyDelete* Ask yourself what is the single argument, or, at this point, the guiding research question that will lead to your argument?
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